ari berman, thanks for joining us, senior contributing writer for the nation. his latest piece "there are 868 , fewer places to vote in n 2016 because the supreme court gutted the voting rights act." we will link to that and also your book "give us the ballot: , the modern struggle for voting rights in america." stay with us. ♪ [music break] amy: "election time" by wyclef jean. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. trump is accusing virginia governor terry mcauliffe, democrat, is acting illegally i restoring voting rights to some 67,000 former felons. trump made the rememark during a speech in leesburg, virginia. trump that youour governor has illegally given voting rights to 60,000 felons -- [boos] he iss letting criminals cancel out the vote of law-abiding citizens. you have to get everyone you know to the polls. we are going to win. we're going to have one of the .reat victories of all time amy: across the country, almost 6 million people are prohibited from voting as a result of state felony disenfranchisement

we have ari berman, here to figure it out. here's a writer for the nation and the author of "give us the ballot." let's listen to donald trump from last night in nevada talking ability this issue, talking about suspicious behavior in clark county. let's listen. >> being reported that certain key democratic polling locations in clark county were kept open for hours and hours beyond closing time to bus and bring democratic voters in. folks, it's a rigged system. it's a rigged system. and we're going to beat it. we're going to beat it. >> ari, what is he talks about? what's the truth there? >> so, what he is saying was that there was very high latino turnout in las vegas over the weekend. lots of people were in line when polls closed. so the polls were extended. this is something that is totally normal and legal. >> legal. >> that if people are in line when polls closed, they're allowed to vote. trump is making it seem like there's some sort of fraud taking place. this is a narrative throughout the campaign, you know, brian, any

ari berman, you covered this issue more than anybody else and you've devoted yourself. don't mean to make this a mutual admiration society but it sickens me where we went through an entire election where the predicted outcome happened and we have to wonder if it was because of e-mails. >> we have to keep fighting. too late now. just have to resist. >>absolutely. hopefully people get it together for the next one. ari berman and cornell belcher and karine jean-pierre will be back in the next hour. >>> millions of americans are combating trumpism with more acts of kindness. more "a.m. joy" after the break. >>> in the wake of such a divisive election there's comfort in seeing the outpouring of unity and support since tuesday. you may have noticed many americans donning safety pins lately which have taken on a special meaning since brexit earlier this year. the pin symbolizes a show solidarity and safety for those who fear discrimination. here in new york commuters have been expressing their feelings through post-it notes all along the subway. over 1,500 messages now adorn s

joinings us now is the senior writer, ari berman, author. part of why jeff sessions was rejected for that federal judgeship when he was in his 30s, was because of the corroborated report of him making racist statements. but the other part of it was the prosecution he brought in selma. can you tell us more, what should we look at now? >> he prosecuted three people very influential civil rights activists in alabama, people who had marched on bloody selma in 1955, who had been beaten and helped to build political power in alabama, who had virtually. the fact that sessions prosecuted them on trumped-up charges, the fact that he prosecuted them, the prosecutions took place in selma of all places, the fact they were prosecuted under the voting rights act, which were supposed to help african-americans, not harm them, was all outrageous at the time. >> and that was a case that went to the jury, the jury that went to the decision, he brought his charges. half, there were like seven african-americans, five white people, came back in five hours and sai

you had ari berman streaming from the top of the hilltop that this was happening, not much was done by democrats. and meanwhile, you had the media fixated, obsessed with every utterance out of wikileaks. every e-mail got live coverage hours and hours and hours, front page stories, over and over and over about e-mails, when the comey letter came out, it was splashed all over the front page of american newspapers. really, what took hillary clinton down was information, disinformation, and voting restrictions. i think that seems to be the okam's razor explanation. what do you think? >> i think the democrats didn't do a good job countering this when they knew it was coming. hillary clinton and the e-mails, going back to her secrecy, that's the one thing that a lot of democrats on capitol hill would talk to me privately about, is that they didn't like the secrecy of hillary clinton. and the problem with that is, when you wall yourself off, you're open to, you know, this expose, whereas, you know, with the wikileaks and what not -- >> not when you're donald trump, you're not. donald trump is

arie berman said there was widespread voter suppression that went unanswered and we haven't dealt with or quantified the magnitude of its influence, but if you look at the new republican back in 2002 and it talked about one of other of jeff sessions' historical precedence and that is his prosecution of civil rights workers who were trying to register voters in alabama. here's an excerpt from that article. sessions focused on these counties to the exclusion of others, caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. are you concerned that with jeff sessions running the civil rights division of the justice department there's more likely to be attacks on protection of people's right to vote? >> sure, joy. he's ill suited to be the attorney general and to be the person who's in charge of enforcing our civil rights law. this is a person who called not only the naacp unamerican but the southern christian leadership conference which was started by martin luther king jr.. this is a person who has